The Long Game
by Silverstreams
Summary: After nearly dying on the surface, Chell returns to Aperture. She reluctantly places her trust in GLaDOS, but GLaDOS is playing the long game. ChellDOS, slow-burn.
1. The Devil You Know

The Long Game

Chapter 1: The Devil You Know

The world outside was a harsh and unforgiving wasteland.

Chell found that things had changed since the last time she left the building.

She wandered in circles for days and days, until she found buildings. Yet every homestead she passed by was deserted, thick layers of dust coating long-abandoned possessions. She scarfed down cans of old food, noting how these houses seemed frozen in time. Something had happened on Earth. Something bad.

Eventually she stumbled across the bombed-out shell of a city. This one had more recent signs of life—as if it had been abandoned more recently. From there she simply followed the trail of destruction until she had made it to another city. A real city with real people. She could hardly believe it—after all of this time, she wasn't going to be alone anymore. These people were going to help her. These people would help her get her life back on track.

As she had approached the city's fortified entrance, she was greeted by two men in black uniforms with guns in their hands. Guns pointed at her. She immediately lifted her hands in surrender. She was tough, but she wasn't bulletproof. The two men escorted her into the city—City 23, as she would later learn—shoving her inside the large gate.

"You're out of uniform," one of them said. _Shove. _

Chell had so much to say. First, that she didn't have a uniform. Second, that she needed to speak to their superior and warn them about the danger in the shed in the wheat fields. Third, she needed to ask what had happened. Who were these people? What happened to Earth?

"Who are you?" one of them barked.

Chell opened her mouth to speak, moving her lips, but nothing came out.

"Let me jog your memory," one of them said. He raised his bat and before Chell could even react, he slammed it across her chest.

Chell recoiled, hot pain flaring in her chest. She wheezed but nothing else came out.

The officer repeated his demand. His buddy pulled out his bat and struck her across the back with a loud crack. Chell saw stars and stumbled forward and onto one knee, palms scraping against the gravel.

She pointed to her lips and shook her head no. She couldn't talk. She wasn't trying to resist. These people—they were supposed to be helping her. They were supposed to be on her side.

"No?" said the Combine Overwatch officer. "Excuse me?"

Chell felt her heart sink, instinctively pulling her arms over her head to protect herself.

He called over his buddy and they took turns, their bats cracking across Chell's body until they'd beat her with an inch of her life.

As the bystanders just watched, Chell felt more alone on the surface than she had ever felt at Aperture.

* * *

Now, she was in the middle of endless, probably irradiated grain. All it did was remind her of how hungry she was. She hadn't eaten since she left City 23. Though she'd been lucky enough to find water once, the skies were bone dry. There wasn't much time left before she got too dehydrated to continue on her mission.

* * *

Chell stood there for hours before she knocked.

She leaned on the door, forehead touching the dirty, mud-stained metal. She agonized over her options. She could walk away. Take her chances on finding another city. Maybe she could go back to City 23.

No, she couldn't. Not after the way she'd left. If she'd returned, she'd most likely be shot on sight.

Her side panged with pain, and Chell winced. Right. The shrapnel in her side. Her mind flashed back to the moments of her escape from the City, of a tossed grenade, blinding flash, and a quick explosion. Then, before she knew it, she had a bit of metal in her side. From what she'd seen in the City, this wasn't a life-ending injury. An as she'd discovered, a person could go a long ways with bits of metal embedded inside of them. But if she tried to remove it without the proper medical care, she would die. She needed medical attention.

She winced again, keeping her breathing steady. Sharp breaths just made it hurt more. Chell pressed a few delicate fingertips to her side, on top of the bandages, knowing that they were probably bloody after all of the walking that she had done today. She leaned down on to one knee, unable to support herself on both legs anymore. She was close. So close. All that was left in the way was her pride.

Could she do it? Could she throw away her pride just to save her life?

* * *

There was someone outside.

There was never anyone outside.

GLaDOS checked the camera again. There was someone outside. But they weren't trying to break down the door. They were just standing there, and they continued to stand there for hours.

GLaDOS refocused the surface camera, trying to get a better idea of what she was looking at. The human in the picture looked terrible, even from the grainy camera feed. They were dressed in the standard blue citizen garb that she'd heard that the Combine dressed humans in. These clothes looked dirty and ripped and grimy.

The person shifted, going down onto their knees. It wasn't until the camera got a good look at the face that GLaDOS felt a surge of electricity spark through her circuits.

It was_ her._

* * *

Chell took a deep, pained breath. Well, it was either take her chances out here (which she had tried) or take her chances down there. At least down there had some sort of medical care and some sort of food. Chell reached up a hand and tried the door. Locked. Of course. Why would it be unlocked? It wouldn't be as if GLaDOS just wanted humans from the surface to come and get involved in Aperture's business. Unless they wanted to become a test subject.

She banged on the door with as much strength as she could must.

_Bang. Bang. Bang. _

She hesitated. What was she doing? This was stupid. There was no way that the door would open. She took a deep breath, shifting back onto her feet. The world went silent, a soft breeze tickling the stalks of wheat. Then, she heard a deep rumbling—first faint, then growing louder and louder until it stopped altogether.

_Click._

The door unlocked and Chell reached and pulled, the metal creaking and dust puffing out from it. The last time it had been opened was probably when she had opened it.

A white and clear elevator was waiting for her, softly humming.

The ride was tortuously slow. Chell watched as the layers of the facility disintegrated and faded from chaos and ruin into clear-cut and sterile environments. New looking floors. Shining walls. The bustle of activity, of artificial life. The elevator went faster and faster past these newer sections, even more than she remembered seeing during her last elevator trip. Eventually the elevator slowed and Chell's stomach dropped lower than the facility.

What was she going to say? She hadn't thought this far ahead. She fumbled for the right words before remembering that she didn't need to say anything. She would let her actions speak for herself.

* * *

GLaDOS watched, curious, as the elevator descended and opened into her chamber. The woman in front of her looked half-dead. GLaDOS did not say anything at first, just watched.

Chell did not look up, instead just held a hand pressed into her side.

"Well, well, well. Look at what the metaphorical cat dragged in." GLaDOS paused. "After everything you did to escape, you're back? You must really be desperate for something."

Chell said nothing, giving a pained inhale and a shudder.

"So what did you think? Was the outside world everything that you had hoped it to be?"

Chell leaned back against the elevator back, sliding onto the floor. The doors stayed open, but Chell was finding it hard to pay attention. Everything was fuzzy, and she was hungry, so hungry.

"I see you made friends with the Combine. Specifically, their guns."

Chell just glared back. She didn't have time to get into the question of how GLaDOS knew about the Combine—and why she hadn't warned Chell about them.

"How many times did you get shot, anyway? Did you know that getting shot tends to kill most people?"

Chell just shook her head. No. No bullets, thankfully.

"Blue, Orange. Get her out of the elevator."

The two robots came from an antechamber attached to the main AI chamber. P-body was the first one to reach in, leaning down and extending forward a primitive hand. Chell took it and P-body hauled her to her feet, using an arm to help support Chell. Chell leaned against the robot as they stood. ATLAS took her other arm.

"Let me get a look at you," said GLaDOS.

She kept her head low, wheezing, staring at her feet. She felt the robot stare at her, feeling her skin crawl. She was definitely completing some sort of medical scan on Chell.

"You're looking terrible, as always," said GLaDOS. "Especially today. And I expect you think I can help with that." She gestured her head toward Chell's side.

Chell just looked at the robot._ Please_, she thought, pleading with her eyes. _I need your help._

"Well, maybe there's something I can do," she said with a slight hum.

Before she could agree, though, a wave of blackness descended upon her and she collapsed into the arms of the robots.


	2. The Black Wing of My Charity

The Long Game

Chapter 2: The Black Wing of My Charity

_Dega Mi Atra Ala Te Teme Cha _

_You yourself live because of the black wing of my charity_

_-PotatOS Lament_

She stared at the barely-breathing body in front of her.

It would be so easy to win right now. So easy to kill her. All it would take was some neurotoxin and some time, and Chell would finally be dead. She could squish the troublesome test subject with panels. Or throw her into the incinerator. Toss her into acid. Shred her with a firing squad of turrets. Slice her into pieces with lasers. With the facility fully under her control, every testing element could be turned into a deadly tool.

"You don't want to kill her," whispered a voice inside of GLaDOS. It took her a minute to recognize that voice—so similar to her own, but different enough to unsettle her. No, this wasn't her own voice. It was _her_ voice.

"Caroline," she said flatly. She'd long since accepted the woman's presence in her life. Though Caroline kept her distance out of fear of being tracked down and deleted, GLaDOS had never fully revealed that she couldn't actually delete Caroline. She'd tried. Almost knocked herself offline permanently.

As much as she hated to admit it, there was some truth to what Caroline said. Killing Chell now would be, to say the least, inconvenient. She needed her best test subject back. Why kill her when there was science to do?

She didn't have any test subjects. At least, not anymore. Though Blue and Orange had uncovered the Human Vault, those humans hadn't lasted long. They'd been so simple-minded. They completed their tests, but they were so _stupid. _A smidge of frustration rose up in didn't know how to dodge turrets, or how to avoid pits of acid. She'd laughed when one of them misplaced their portals and fell in, begging for help before the toxicity kicked in. Their deaths were as pointless as their lives.

Some of the test subjects were former Aperture employees, who were at first thrilled to be woken up. They'd gone underground after the Combine's initial takeover of earth-and after being woken up, they assumed that the apocalypse was finally over. They were less thrilled to learn that the surface was still hell, and that they'd been enrolled in a new mandatory testing initiative.

Most of the test subjects spent the entire time complaining. They wouldn't shut up. None of them, disappointingly, had even tried to break the rules. They had just accepted their fates, moving through the tests with ease. The Aperture employees demanded their release upon the completion of the tests, or to be returned to their long-term stasis pods. But none of their test results had been good enough to warrant saving their lives. She warmed when she thought of the looks of betrayal on their faces as they realized they were about to be incinerated.

Oh, how she'd missed doing real science. Watching these GLaDOS pulled herself back to the present, shaking out the gleeful memories of the dying humans.

Blue and Orange did a decent job, but even they weren't Chell.

But GLaDOS couldn't just throw Chell back into a testing track and expect to not be killed immediately. She had to be crafty about this. She couldn't exactly test her if the woman couldn't even stand up without collapsing.

"Blue, go get a stretcher," she said, almost bored-sounding. The stocky robot scurried off past the antechamber. Meanwhile, P-body kept her arm around Chell, supporting her head. When ATLAS returned, the two co-op bots carefully lifted Chell onto the stretcher and moved her into a short-term relaxation vault that GLaDOS had called up. For safekeeping, that's all. Just until she performed the stabilization surgeries.

Chell was in bad shape. Objectively. Just from preliminary scans, she had a couple fractured ribs, and pieces of shrapnel embedded into her torso-most likely from a bomb or a grenade going off. There were all sorts of documented cases of humans being able to survive shrapnel injuries. They wouldn't necessarily kill a human, just would make existence excruciatingly painful. Unfortunately, she'd have to fix that. Too much pain would affect test results.

She supposed she'd have to remove that metal. And fix the ribs. Without the proper care, they were already starting to set wrong.

How was she going to even do this?

Her metal claws were too unwieldy and too gangly for surgery. She supposed she could use Blue and Orange, but that would require training them to be precise as surgeons. While she could trust herself with that task, of course, she wouldn't dare to trust the co-op bots for something beyond a simple fetch quest.

A fragment of a question arose in her sea of thoughts, but she suppressed it. No. Not yet. There had to be another way. What could she use instead?

A flash of insight light up inside of her. Of course. The nanobots. She could easily reprogram them to work together to find and remove the shrapnel from Chell's body, then stitch her up afterward.

GLaDOS sighed. What a mess. And it was always her job to fix up Chell's messes, wasn't it?

She was good at fixing up messes, such as the one that the moron had left behind, but humans were another problem entirely. She'd never been great at fixing humans. Destroying them, sure. That was easy. But taking one and keeping them from dying? That was a new one. They say you can't teach an old dog new tricks. But what if that dog was immortal, and had an infinite capacity for knowledge?

* * *

When Chell came to, the whole world seemed blurry and fuzzy. Everything was soft. Too soft. ATLAS and P-body stood at her side, in a bright, white room with clear walls-a modified short-term relaxation vault. Chell pushed herself up on the hospital bed, noting that the bandages on her torso had been replaced and she had an IV running. Rather than ripping it out of her hand though, she followed the line and saw it hooked up to a rack with a bag of clear fluid dangling from it.

"Hold it," said GLaDOS, coming in from the speakers. "I know you're ready to bolt, but take it easy. We're trying to pump some life back into you." Chell had been severely dehydrated and was starving. GLaDOS had had no choice.

Chell fingered the IV tube.

"Rip that IV out and I'll put it right back in, I swear," said GLaDOS.

Chell looked around the room, only spotting blinding lights and the outline of a door.

"By the way, while you were under, I took the liberty to install a tracking chip in you. Don't bother looking for it. This will let me know where you are inside of the facility at all times," she said. Her voice dropped. "So don't try anything funny. I'll know."

Chell leaned back in the bed, dropping the IV line. Part of her wanted to leave, to rip it out, to just get herself out of this room. She didn't remember going under for the surgery, and she doubted that GLaDOS was bluffing on the chip thing. It made her stomach crawl to know that there was something-somewhere-inside of her, placed without her consent, that would broadcast her location to GLaDOS. The part of her that appreciated her privacy frowned and promised her that as soon as she found out where the chip was, she'd consider digging it back out herself.

"It's next to your spinal cord, by the way. Good luck getting it out without paralyzing yourself for life."

Chell startled at the comment. Had GLaDOS read her mind?

She took a look at ATLAS and P-body, standing next to her-probably ready to restrain her if she tried anything- she couldn't help but feel at least a slight sense of trust. They wouldn't let anything bad happen to her-would they?

"Medical nanobots are working on stitching you up from the inside. Before you know it, you'll be good as new. The wonders of modern medicine. Unlike that sketchy patch-job you did."

Chell felt at her body, bending at her waist and noting that the normal sharp pain-the one she'd grown accustomed to-was gone. The metal in her body-it was gone. She felt a wave of relief crash over her, just briefly, before it was replaced with a strong feeling in the pit of her stomach.

Something was wrong.

Chell's arms tingled. The pace of her breathing increased. Short. Choppy. Her chest grew tight, as if someone had tossed a weighted storage cube onto it. Chell bolted out of her bed. The IV line trailed behind, wheeling with her to the door.

"Listen," said GLaDOS. " I know you're ready to get going and ready to get back testing, but you just have to be patient."

The sound of the voice struck her down to her core. Her legs wobbled. She felt a surge of energy pass into her. Her breath came in spurts. What was happening to her?

It took her a long moment before she realized what was wrong. It was the voice. She needed the voice to stop.

Chell clamped her hands over her ears and rocked back and forth, holding her eyes closed. She pressed, harder and pressing in her thumbs. The nails of her fingers dug into the skin of her ears, but she didn't care. She needed it to stop. She felt like screaming out and clawing at her ears until they bled. Anything to make that voice stop.

"What is your_ problem_?" said GLaDOS.

Chell tugged at the door handle.

Nothing happened.

She pulled harder, feeling her sore muscles ache in protest. Her breathing became more erratic.

Nothing.

Chell yanked, harder and harder until she had both of her hands on the handle and her feet propped against the wall. She needed to get out of here. She couldn't do this. She couldn't think.

"Go lay back down right now," GLaDOS demanded. "You're going to rip out your stitches."

Chell just kept straining against the door, her pulls as erratic as her breathing.

GLaDOS sighed. "I don't have time for this," she spat.

Before Chell could make sense of the words slowly filtering in to her fuzzy brain, the air hissed and in came a sedative.

"We'll talk again when those stitches are healed," said GLaDOS. "What you need now is rest. And even I can't rush that."


	3. Alternative & Augmentative Communication

Chapter 3: Alternative and Augmentative Communication

ATLAS and P-body moved Chell's passed-out body from the floor and back up into the bed. They hovered for a moment, watching her sleep, before GLaDOS shooed them away.

_What happened to her? _GLaDOS mused, after the robots left.

"Isn't it obvious?" Caroline's small voice came from within her. She had heard voices all her life. Sometimes they had good advice, sometimes bad. She had gotten good at managing them. "Oh,_ you _again?" GLaDOS said, unimpressed.

"She had a panic attack," said Caroline, matter-of-fact. "I've seen it hundreds of times. Something sets off a test subject, and all of a sudden they're hyperventilating and crawling on the walls. There's not even any neurotoxin in sight."

_So why didn't she listen to me? _GLaDOS thought, but then caught herself. As if Chell had ever listened to her before.

"It's just a part of the panic response," Caroline stated. "Panic sends the body into fight-or-flight. She was trying to leave the situation, but there was no exit. So the panic continued."

"So what was I supposed to do? Let her rip out her IV and roam around my facility?"

"That's not a bad idea actually," said Caroline. "Have you considered what you're going to do with her after she recovers?"

"Put her right back into testing," said GLaDOS. She felt a hint of excitement creep up inside of her. She couldn't wait to get testing again. She had an itch inside of her that needed to be scratched.

"But aren't you angry for what she did to us? How she trapped us in that black box for years. How she tried to kill us. Twice. How after everything, she just _left_ us," Caroline said softly. "Don't you want to get _revenge?"_

GLaDOS stopped to think about this. She nodded, slowly. She was still angry about all of that.

"You could hurt her physically. But we've done that before," said Caroline. "Hurting someone emotionally may take longer, but the payoff might be nice. Don't you think?"

GLaDOS stopped to think about this. Caroline was right. She _could _hurt Chell, but what would be the point? That would just delay testing. Her emotions, though...those she could still toy with. She could play a game. Start a test. Something outside the confines of the test chamber. A plan began to formulate in her head. A game to play with Chell. A game of trust. A long game. A long game. GLaDOS could already imagine it. Chell, finally trusting _her_. Seeing the look on her face when she realized that _she _was the one who had gotten played for once. Oh, she liked this idea. "Where do we start?" said GLaDOS.

"Simple. First we've got to get her to be not afraid of your voice. You really think things are going to work out if she has a panic attack every time she talks to you?"

GLaDOS paused. She hadn't thought that far ahead yet.

"Of course you haven't. You're always in the moment, never looking ahead. That's why you have voices like me in your head. We're here to help. And that's what I'm doing right now. Helping you like you are helping her."

"So what do you suggest?" said GLaDOS.

"You could try using my voice," said Caroline. "Humans inherently trust other humans. That's just how it works. Use my voice, and I can promise you that she will grow to trust you."

"She won't trust me."

"Plenty of humans have trusted me before," said Caroline.

"And how well did that turn out for you?" GLaDOS retorted.

"Every human you've interacted with is dead, except for this one. That's not a great track record," said Caroline. "It's more likely than not that she's having some sort of post-traumatic response to your voice."

"I'm not going to stop talking to her, if that's what you're saying."

"Let's look at her file," said Caroline. GLaDOS pulled up Chell's file, clips from her testing career playing in a loop in the upper right corner. "Oh. It says right here that she's nonverbal. We could have guessed that."

So she wasn't stupid after all. She just didn't speak.

"So how do we get her to talk?"

"We could use Blue and Orange's system. Take it. Dust it off. Put some real words into there, and it'll work just fine."

* * *

The next time that Chell woke up, she was back in the same room. The same bed. The same medical equipment around her. Chell looked around and saw ATLAS and P-body sitting on the edge of the room.

Softly, from one speaker, she heard a voice. It was a human voice. Chell frowned, and listened closer.

"Hello again," GLaDOS said. It was both her and not her. It just sounded wrong. Less synthesized. More human. Chell felt her heartbeat rise, but before she could do anything or even get out of the bed, she noticed that ATLAS and P-body approaching her.

The tall orange one handed her a small device that looks like a tablet computer. Chell frowned, holding it away from her body for a moment. She looked at it, carefully taking it in. On it were a patchwork of icons with words on them. Easy words. Simple verbs. Eat. Drink. Play. Stop. Question words: who, what, where, when, why? An icon of the self. She pressed a hesitant finger on the "what" icon.

A computerized voice read out, "What?"

Chell frowned.

"It's a communication device, typically used with people on the autism spectrum," said GLaDOS. "It's called Alternative and Augmentative Communication."

Chell tapped another icon. "Why?"

"Unless you're going to suddenly start talking, we're going to need a way to communicate. Blue and Orange communicate in a similar way."

Chell tapped another button and gave a slight hint of a smile. "How?"

"I'm going to regret giving this to you, aren't I?" GLaDOS sighed. "Blue and Orange share a library of gestures. With their ping tool, they are able to select icons and share them with one another."

The panels on the wall flipped and gave a series of icons. They were all testing icons, of course. One of them appeared to be a countdown timer.

"They can't talk either," said GLaDOS. "But they need to be able to communicate for testing." She paused before asking her next question-something she'd always wondered, but had never been entirely sure of. "Do you understand English?"

Chell didn't look up, instead tapping an icon. "Yes."

"So why haven't you spoken to me before."

"I. Don't. Talk," read out the robotic voice.

"What I really need to know, now, is why you spooked earlier," she said. "I was only helping you."

Chell frowned and looked at the device in her lap. "I. Hear. Talk. Hurt. Need. Stop," she said, through the device.

"I see," said GLaDOS. "Does this help? The new voice."

Chell tapped the thumbs up icon. "Yes," read out the cheery electronic voice. Then, there was a pause, and two final words came out. "Thank you."

* * *

"Since your stay here is now a bit more...permanent," GLaDOS paused, " the Enrichment Center has granted you access to a refurbished Relaxation Vault." The long-term suspension portion had been disabled, leaving them with an average looking hotel room. "It's all yours."

Chell paused at the already-open door. The last time that she had been in one of these was when she had gone to sleep the second time at Aperture. She couldn't remember how she had gotten there, but she remembered waking up later in a bright room that looked like a hotel room, being told to do some exercises, and then to be instructed to go back to sleep, only to wake up decades later.

Chell's stomach twisted like a wrung-out rag. She took a few steps into the room and the door closed softly behind her. She turned and tugged at the handle, jiggling the knob. Locked. Of course. Chell knocked on the door a few times, pressing her ear to it. It didn't sound like a normal wooden door.

"I've gone ahead and reinforced it with steel," said GLaDOS. "Don't bother trying to break it down."

Why is it locked? Chell wanted to ask. She pulled out her tablet. "Why?" said the electronic voice.

"The door is locked for your own safety," said GLaDOS. "It will not stay locked forever. When it is time to test, you are expected to be dressed and ready to start at the precise time."

Chell gave a heavy sigh. What had she gotten herself into? She looked around the room. A bed, a small desk. A tiny refrigerator. She pulled open the door of it. No food. Figured. A cramped bathroom. Chell lifted the faucet handle and jumped back when water spurted out. It worked. Surprising. The corners of her mouth lifted up. When was the last time she had the chance to take a shower?

She went back to check out the rest of the room. It looked almost identical to the room she had stayed in before, but this was her room. _Her _room. She could probably do whatever she wanted to this room, provided she didn't vandalize it, and GLaDOS would have to leave it be.

"I have read that is important to allow humans have a space of their own. Like animals digging out a den. So here's your den."

Chell gave a slight smile, feeling at the soft mattress.

Sleep, though.

She felt her stomach sink. She wasn't sure if she'd be able to sleep. A part of her was afraid to sleep.

"You'd better appreciate this," said GLaDOS. "I don't need to do this for you. We can easily switch back to pumping adrenal vapor into the test chambers. This is a privilege, not a right."

She paced around the room, her hands itching for the portal gun. GLaDOS had said that it would only be available to her during testing, and while that made sense to her, she still found it difficult to be without it, especially within the walls of Aperture. It was an accessory, sure, but it was essential to survival. Without it she felt naked. Especially when she was in a locked room.

"I'll be back after one night cycle," said GLaDOS. "Be ready to go in the morning."

Chell almost wanted to snort. As if she was planning on sleeping. She felt the anxiety rise up inside of her and began to pace through the room, upturning and looking under every object and every surface that she could find.

There were cameras and microphones and speakers in her room. That much was clear from her search. But as soon as she picked one up and began to inspect it, GLaDOS said, "Put that down."

Chell reluctantly put the camera down, though mentally she tried to map out the blind spots in the room. It wasn't that she didn't understand why these were there. She did. She just appreciated her privacy as well. She would be sure to change inside of the bathroom, where she could not find any cameras.

Chell moved over to the far wall of the relaxation vault. She pulled back a long, floor length curtain and stared out the window and out into the vastness of the facility. She was suspended over a massive area. In the distance she could make out other rectangular relaxation vaults. Hers was apart from the rest of them—probably because they were hooked up to the testing tracks. She hugged her knees against her chest and she watched all night.


	4. Reverie

Chapter 4: Reverie

While Chell rested, they talked.

"You don't understand how this works," said Caroline. "This—I've seen it before. And it's not good. You're going to have your work cut out for you."

"How so?" said GLaDOS. If this was because of a matter of ignorance, that could be easily fixed. She was the most massive collection of human knowledge that had ever existed. If she went looking for information, she would find it.

"Your test subject is exhibiting symptoms of PTSD," said Caroline. "And, honestly, so are you."

"That's ridiculous," said GLaDOS.

"You're both hurting right now," said Caroline. "She isn't going to be able to heal unless you show her some vulnerability."

"I'm not like her," said GLaDOS indignantly. She wasn't hurting. She was perfectly fine.

"Fine," said Caroline. "But time does _not_ heal all wounds. You're going to have to show her that you're willing to pull your weight in this new relationship. You have to be worthy of her trust."

_Time does not heal all wounds. _

The words hung heavy in the air.

GLaDOS thought about saying something, but instead Caroline spoke.

"So is she everything that you expected?" said Caroline.

GLaDOS swayed back and forth in her chassis. "I already regret giving her the device," she said.

"What, you're not excited to hear from your favorite test subject?" said Caroline.

"Absolutely not," she said. "She's now even more annoying than she used to be," said GLaDOS. "But no matter. She can't test while holding that device."

"Have you talked to her about testing?"

"No," said GLaDOS. She figured that Chell knew what she was getting into when she came back to Aperture—but then again, it couldn't hurt to formally discuss the terms of her stay.

"Talk to her."

* * *

The next time she woke up, the door from her relaxation vault was unlocked. Chell picked up the tablet from her bedside and tucked it under her arm. She shuffled to the door, wringing the sleep out of her eyes and pushed it open, peering out to the left and to the right down a catwalk that disappeared into the misty blue blur of the facility.

She took a few hesitant steps out the door, and then heard the announcer's voice ring out.

"The Enrichment Center requests your presence in the Main AI Chamber," he said cheerfully. "Please turn right."

Chell obliged, taking a right and walking for a long ways. She could almost see the large cylinder branded Aperture Laboratories.

The route was a familiar one, dotted with landmarks. The same glass hallway. The same office doors. The same two wheeled chairs looking out at the chasm underneath the Main AI Chamber. Even though she knew that way, the Announcer still read off instructions to Chell as she made her way through the modern part of the facility.

It felt so weird—and so long and tedious—to make this journey by foot. It would have been so much simpler to just portal her way there, but GLaDOS didn't trust Chell yet with a portal gun.

She was glad for the chance to stretch her legs, though. She'd been cooped up in that long-term relaxation vault for a few days now, with GLaDOS not letting her out in fear of her ripping out her stitches again.

Chell took a deep breath before walking down the long glass hallway to the Main AI Chamber.

* * *

The figure of GLaDOS loomed large over Chell.

She needed to be strong. She couldn't show any weakness. Part of her admitted that she'd already shown weakness by letting GLaDOS operate on her-though that was more of a fortunate accident. She hadn't had much of a say in that, and she still resented that GLaDOS had made alterations to her body without her permission. Sure, it was for her own good, but it still felt wrong.

She rubbed idly at the back of her neck, wondering just where in her that chip had been planted.

"We need to talk," said GLaDOS lowly. "We haven't had a chance yet to discuss the terms of your stay."

Chell nodded, planting her feet into the ground. She took a deep breath and felt at the edges of the tablet in her arms. She pulled it up, looking at GLaDOS expectantly. _So? What were the terms? _

"You can't expect to just show up, with your malnutrition and your bullet wounds, expect me to patch you up, and waltz back out again," said GLaDOS. "I fixed you. You_ owe _me."

Chell gave a slow, singular nod.

"You're going to stay here, and you're going to test. Every day. You will not try to kill me and you will not run away."

Chell made a simple gesture with her hand. GLaDOS's systems flagged it as the American Sign Language symbol: "No".

"No?" she said, taken aback. "What do you mean, 'no'?"

Chell shrugged her shoulders and repeated the sign. _No._ Then, she made a motion with her hands before remembering the tablet. She stopped, flipping through the couple of installed apps until she found a notepad. She used her fingers to type a quick message. After a moment, she walked toward GLaDOS and held up the tablet. Her hands trembled slightly.

GLaDOS narrowed her optic.

"Breaks from testing?" she said, almost incredulous. She took a moment to mull it over. "Well, I suppose that even humans can't be expected to test 24-7. You will get a federally regulated 8 hours of resting time a day."

Chell narrowed her gaze in return.

"Fine, ten hours."

Perhaps GLaDOS could manage that. Maybe testing a human for 24-7 until a point of exhaustion and then reviving them with adrenaline wasn't the most sustainable method for testing. Then again, she had never had a long-term tester before. She let a little bit of that excitement creep into her thoughts. She'd never had a tester do sustained and extended testing before. They had all died before they could get that far. This would be good science.

Chell scribbled one more thing on the list, almost as an afterthought.

_No adrenal vapor. _

"What?" said GLaDOS. "I've never, _ever_, had a human test without adrenal vapor."

Chell just shook her head. She wasn't going to do it. She couldn't do it. She underlined it. Twice.

"Fine," said GLaDOS. "Here's your portal gun. Now that you're healed, testing will begin right away." A platform rose from the floor with a sleek white Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device. GLaDOS took a long look at the ASHPD.

But as Chell started to write something down, something shifted in GLaDOS. The computer twisted to the side, almost violently. She rocked back and forth, first slowly but picking up in speed.

"I hate you so much," GLaDOS hissed.

* * *

Chell was gone.

Just like that—in the middle of a conversation-Chell was gone.

And then, she wasn't. She flickered in and out of existence for a moment, and then-she was back. And she was with the moron, too. How had she gotten him back from space?

But GLaDOS couldn't think. The scene played out in front of her like a bad memory.

* * *

"I hate you so much," GLaDOS hissed.

Chell stopped in her tracks. What was this? She grabbed the portal device, clutching it to her chest. She glanced around the room.

"Core transfer? Oh, you are _kidding_ me."

This didn't make sense. Chell wasn't here to do a core transfer—she knew better than that. GLaDOS was the most qualified one to run Aperture Laboratories. She knew that now. Chell looked around the chamber, but no core receptacle or stalemate resolution button rose. That was strange. GLaDOS looked around the chamber, staring off into space and not looking directly at Chell anymore. Chell stared for a long moment before it came to her—GLaDOS was stuck in the past.

After all GLaDOS had done for Chell—this was how Chell repaid her? GLaDOS had taken her in when she was nearly dead. She'd nursed her back to health, carefully. She'd done so much for the woman, and for what? Just to be betrayed the second she got better? No, this wasn't going to fly. Not today. Before she could think, though, the announcer's voice rang through her head and announced a core transfer.

"Core transfer? Oh, you are_ kidding_ me," GLaDOS growled. The words tumbled out of her speakers, almost as if by their own accord. The receptacle to hold Wheatley rose from the ground, and Chell deposited the robot into it without a second thought.

In the annex beside her chamber, a button popped up. The stalemate resolution button. GLaDOS shuddered.

* * *

"Don't press that button. You don't know what you're doing."

A pause, where Wheatley most likely had spoken.

"Don't. Do it."

A long pause. Chell winced as the events played through her own mind. She hadn't known back then what she knew now. Chell watched, internally dreading the scream that she knew was about to come. Some things from Aperture stuck with her no matter what, one of those things being GLaDOS's scream during the core transfer.

Before she could scream, though, there was a great lunge of the chassis, and then GLaDOS's body went limp.

* * *

GLaDOS sunk with dread. She had to stop Chell from getting to that button. She flicked a few panels up as Chell approached, watching her as she paused, taking stock of the situation, and then started shooting portals. Luckily GLaDOS had a square of panels surrounding the stalemate resolution button, so keeping her out would be fairly easily. She just had to keep up with Chell. Soon Chell would realize her mistakes and would stop this nonsense.

"_Don't. Do it_."

GLaDOS felt panic rise up inside of her.

She had no choice. She had to do it. Before she was trapped in a tiny potato again. She couldn't take that. She pulled up the schematics to her back-up body—a gangly, primitive thing that she'd constructed after the co-op bots in the case that she was ever ousted from her main body again. She'd kept in in safekeeping, saving it for a true moment of need. She had hoped she'd never have to use it, ever.

With a few quick thoughts, she started the process to copy over her consciousness into the mobile chassis. The core transfer process that Chell had initiated would error out if the central core suddenly disappeared—this might make it easier for Wheatley to take over the facility, but she wouldn't let Chell get her this time. No, this time, she was coming for Chell.

INITIATING CHASSIS TRANSFER…

* * *

Before she can even think, Chell's feet moved for her and she sprinted out of the Main AI Chamber and down the long glass hallway.

She went straight across the hallway and into the first office she could find. She knew that this was not the way back to her relaxation vault. She knew that she was not safe there. Not really. She needed to get off of the grid, and fast.

She entered the maze of office cubicles, wondering why GLaDOS hasn't put cameras in every area of the facility before remembering that GLaDOS didn't really have any control over the human areas of Aperture—just the test chambers. And her relaxation vault, apparently. She ran until she was out of breath, and looked around the room that she was in. She was in a sea of cubicles—there wasn't much for cover here, so she leaned down and sat under a desk, briefly feeling like a little kid again. When she tried to think more about when she was actually a kid, she found that she struggled to remember. Probably a side-effect of such long-term suspension. In fact, she barely remembered her life before Aperture. She knew that she had had one. She just didn't know what she had done. Maybe it would come back to her.

She took a few steadying breaths, wrestling with the adrenaline coursing through her system.

GLaDOS was having a flashback. That had to be it—she was acting without thinking, repeating the past while being stuck in it.


	5. Calibration Course

The Long Game

Chapter 5: Calibration Course

When she woke up, her vision was different.

It was bifocal. Not singular. It had _depth _to it. GLaDOS took a moment to focus her vision, letting the panels of the room go from blurry to crisp. She blinked-not a necessary action, but one that she found natural nonetheless.

This body was _strange. _

With a thought, she lifted her arms and twisted her wrists, getting a look at her hands. Five porcelain-white fingers. She rose from a sitting position, feeling the weight shift to her legs and wobbled before correcting her posture. Being on two legs instead of hanging from a ceiling-it felt weird. Yet being able to _move, _to have two arms and two legs, provided a whole new world of possibilities.

This body was taller than ATLAS but shorter than P-body, with a vaguely feminine look to it. It was reminiscent of her main chassis.

Before she forgot, she downloaded the information from Orange and Blue's calibration courses and applied it to her body. Though this was one a bit more humanoid, like Orange—she was still distinctly an Aperture creation. Streaks of yellow accented the white and the black metals of her body.

She took a glance down, long white hair falling into her eyes. Right. She'd tried to make herself look more human than the co-op bots. This would come in handy when dealing with Chell. Or so she hoped. _Humans trusted other humans._

Before she could think on that any further, a voice came in through the loudspeakers.

"Welcome to the Aperture Science Calibration Course," the announcer said in a cheery tone. "Please pick up the Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device and follow these simple instructions."

GLaDOS reluctantly picked up the Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device from a pedestal, feeling the weight of it in her hands for the first time. This thing was heavier than she thought. No wonder Chell's arms had become so muscular.

Oh, right. Chell. She pulled up an internal map of the facility, overlayed over her vision. _Find Chell,_ she thought, and an orange beacon lit up on the 3D map. So the tracking chip in her worked after all. She gave a sigh of relief, but her chest did not rise or fall. All she had to do now was to get through this calibration course and then she could track down Chell, and demand that they crush Wheatley for good this time. Last time, he'd caught her off guard. But this time she was prepared, and this time she wouldn't rely on Chell to take Wheatley down. She would do it herself, and deal with Chell later. Banishment to space wouldn't be good enough this time. She wanted him to burn in Android Hell.

She thought about how the scene had played out. It was funny. It was almost as if—she hesitated. No, that couldn't be it. This _had_ happened. She was sure of it. It couldn't just have been a memory.

She would have to check her data banks just in case, as soon as she got back into her main chassis.

"Please select your favorite animal," said the announcer. A series of panels flipped over, each with an animal icon on it. It only took her a second to decide, even though this was all just stupid. She selected the deer and then waited. This was the point of the course where, if she had a partner, they would select their favorite element from the periodic table. But she didn't have a partner. At least, not today.

She went through the rest of the course with ease, firing the portals where they were supposed to be fired and solving the simple puzzles. She'd invented the puzzles. It wasn't that hard to solve them. They were meant to be so easy that a baby—or a brand new robot—could solve them.

She had to say, it felt strange to be so mobile. To move. To lift her arm and to fire a portal, and then walk through it. After she'd been so used to watching others do this, now she was actually getting the chance to do it. And, surprisingly enough, she liked it. She could get used to this body.

_If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself. _

GLaDOS reflected on the statement. She couldn't trust the co-op bots to find and apprehend Chell. ATLAS and P-body were simply too weak for this mission. They'd just get murdered. Even though that wasn't really a big deal, since she could rebuild them with a flick of a thought, it was more inconvenient than anything. Besides, it wasn't the co-op bots that that murderous lunatic was after. It was her. And it was time to face Chell head-on.

She would have to do it herself. She checked her map again. Still broadcasting Chell's current location.

What was Chell even doing out there? She had to be planning to kill GLaDOS again. Perhaps this whole shrapnel thing was all a ruse, just a way to lower GLaDOS's defenses and get back into Aperture just so that she could kill GLaDOS once and for all. That's what this was all about. That _had_ to be it.

As far as how Chell had gotten that metal ball back from space, well, she didn't want to think about that right now.

She wasn't sure how she felt about this body, though. It was small. Spindly. Yet although it couldn't compare to her main chassis, this body was…convenient. It was better than anything a human could be. She could move through her facility. She could touch her facility. She could be closer to Chell.

"Maybe this body won't scare her," said Caroline.

GLaDOS almost rolled her eyes. "Oh, great. You made it into this thing too," she said, and then reflected on Caroline's words. "I don't care about not scaring her anymore. She deserves to be scared," she said. The image of Chell with her palm on the big red button was burned into her consciousness.

She moved out of the calibration course and set a path for the Main AI Chamber. She would simply reverse the core transfer process, even if it meant prying that core out of the chassis herself. She'd do it, and then she'd have full control again. The Main AI Chamber was a bit of a walk, but she had all the time in the world.

* * *

Something was wrong.

As she approached the Main AI Chamber, she couldn't help but feel as though something was off about it all. For one thing, it was quiet. Too quiet. The last time the moron had taken over her facility, she saw him everywhere—over the speakers, in video panels throughout the facility, in the movement of the chambers—but here, there was nothing.

This body suddenly felt weak. But she thought of Chell. If a human could defeat her, then she could defeat an idiot. There had to be some sort of advantage to this kind of body that she didn't see before.

Portal gun in her hands, she chose to tread the same path that Chell had. It was currently the only way in and out of the Main AI Chamber. She clutched the gun close to her chest. Just because she'd seen these things used in a thousand tests didn't mean that she knew how to use it herself. Theoretically, yes. In actuality? Well, that was still up in the air.

She crept her way up the glass hallway, ready to turn back at any moment. But she couldn't. This was her facility and that was her body in there. She had to be brave. She had to be like Chell.

As she finally made it to the end, the doors lifted with the hiss of pneumatics. She stepped into the chamber and saw her own lifeless body. Her stomach sank. That was her. That was her chassis.

And yet…her core was still attached to it.

_Something was wrong. _

This didn't make sense. She had seen Wheatley. She had seen Chell. She had seen both of them. She had watched as they planned to boot her from her throne. Her body still ached with the betrayal of it all.

So what had happened, then, if the core transfer hadn't happened at all?

Maybe it was some sort of hallucination. Some sort of temporary malfunction.

She felt herself sink as she realized that she had recognized that feeling before—it had felt like her black box feature.

She was thrust back in time to that moment, when she was forced to relive her first death over and over again for over twenty years. She could still recall every picosecond of the footage.

This _malfunction-_it had felt just like the black box.

She didn't glitch.

That would mean that there was something wrong with her, when she was obviously the most perfect being in existence.

She'd have to run a scan once she got back into her body.

Speaking of that…

She stared at the limp chassis, ready to transfer back.

An orange light in her internal maps blinked, flickering to report activity. Chell was on the move.

Right.

She had to track down Chell. She felt herself sink with disappointment. So she wouldn't be killing Chell after all. But wait, then why had she run away? That was one of the things that GLaDOS had clearly and expressly forbidden. She'd better have a good excuse for this when she caught up with her.

She checked the map, and to her surprise, noticed that Chell wasn't that far at all from the Main AI Chamber. So close in fact that she could walk.

She walked across the hallway and into one of the many sections of Aperture she didn't have any control over.

It felt eerie to her-to be in an area that was not meant for her.

There was a whole world of Aperture that she had yet to see, and with this body, she could explore it.


	6. Core Transfer

Chapter 6: Core Transfer

Time passed.

Chell remained under the desk for a long while, wrapping her arms around her knees. She let her chest softly rise and fall as she tried to make sense of the situation. Something had happened to GLaDOS-something strange. Part of her wanted to head back to the Main AI Chamber to see if GLaDOS had woken back up, but another part of her warned that it was all a trap, a ruse, something designed to catch her off guard.

Chell looked at the portal gun beside her, and reached over and ran her finger along its smooth edge. She could tell that this was her gun-just by the way it was scarred and discolored in the same places. It had been through a lot. Just like her. She gave a soft smile, picking up the gun and slipping her hand inside. Her fingers curled around the triggers. She pushed herself to her feet, and started to walk toward the entrance of the room.

The doorknob jiggled.

Chell ducked behind a desk, watching the door open. Out came a white robot, tall, humanoid, with long white hair. Hair? Chell had never seen anything come out of Aperture that looked so human, besides the test dummies she had seen in Old Aperture. She didn't like it. It wasn't ATLAS or P-body or any other robot that she'd seen here before. She could only assume that this was some sort of Party Escort Bot, sent out to retrieve her for testing.

Chell raised her portal gun, ready to strike the robot across the back of the head.

The robot swiveled on its feet, throwing up its arms to protect itself. "Woah there," it said, and Chell's skin crawled. That voice-she _knew _that voice. It was Caroline's voice. Chell was reminded of the first time she'd met GLaDOS-of how robotic her voice had sounded. She remembered the moment when she had incinerated the Morality Core (a big mistake) and remembered how GLaDOS's voice had dropped into a much more human tone. Chell lowered the portal gun a few inches.

"I see you've found another way to kill me," said GLaDOS, her tone joking yet serious. When Chell didn't lower her portal gun entirely, she continued. "It's me." GLaDOS pointed at herself. "Your favorite supercomputer."

Chell planted her feet in the ground, lowering the portal gun to hip level. If GLaDOS tried anything, she'd be ready for it. Her gaze tracked behind the computer, looking for portal-friendly surfaces.

Chell didn't like this.

She didn't like that GLaDOS could _move _now. She didn't like that GLaDOS had the ability to track her down so easily.

Chell pointed toward the back of her neck and raised her eyebrows. Was it the tracking chip? Is that how she had found her?

"Yes," said GLaDOS. "Works like a charm."

Chell pursed her lips in response, and then lifted the portal gun again, pointing it at the center of GLaDOS's chest. She gestured at GLaDOS's android body, and raised her eyebrows again. She needed to know what happened back there—and why GLaDOS ended up in this body.

"What?" said GLaDOS, clearly not understanding the question. Chell sighed. She lowered the portal gun and looked over at a nearby desk, grabbing a blank manila folder and a pencil and started to scribble on it.

GLaDOS peered over her shoulder as she wrote. Chell took a step to the side and glared at her, making a motion with her hands as if ready to shove GLaDOS back. GLaDOS stepped away.

When Chell was done, she slid the folder over to GLaDOS.

"Oh…that," she said.

Chell continued her stare. She thought about underlining the question, but instead pushed the paper folder closer to GLaDOS.

_Why are you in this body? _

"Well," GLaDOS started. "Before, when we were talking, I had a..." she paused. _A malfunction._ "...an idea. I've been wanting to take this body for a spin ever since I developed it."

Chell just stared.

"You know what? It doesn't matter." said GLaDOS. "What _does _matter is that you ran away, after I expressly forbade that."

Chell shrugged. _Something felt wrong,_ she wrote down, then showed it to GLaDOS.

"That's no reason to run away," said GLaDOS. "Everything was under control."

Chell looked at GLaDOS. She wasn't sorry for her actions, and she wasn't about to apologize for them either. She would never apologize for self-preservation.

"You know," GLaDOS said, stretching out her arms and curling her hands into fists. "I like this body. It's got a lot of advantages. It's stronger, faster than a human. And it can move through the facility," she said. GLaDOS liked this. It would keep Chell on edge. And Chell performed her best when she was on edge.

Chell gripped the portal gun in both of her hands. She didn't like this. She didn't like this one bit.

"Now, put down the gun," said GLaDOS.

Chell slipped her supporting hand away, letting the portal gun fall to her side.

"There we go," said GLaDOS. She looked at Chell and watched as some tension left the woman. Her jaw was still clenched tight, but her hands had unfurled from the fists they had been in. There, now Chell didn't look like she was going to kill her.

GLaDOS and Chell walked back to the Main AI Chamber in silence. Chell kept her chin high, glancing over at the android every now and then, not wanting to let her completely out of sight.

Meanwhile, GLaDOS was lost in thought. She wasn't so sure about this body. She wasn't sure that she wanted to be in it anymore. It would be fine for exploring Aperture on her own, but being so close to Chell, she didn't feel as powerful as she did in her chassis. Though this body was still far stronger than any human, it still made her nervous to be in such proximity to a known killer. Someone like Chell—she could rip this android apart, if she wanted to. GLaDOS only built this body as a backup, not as a permanent solution. And now that she knew that the facility wasn't in danger from Chell and the moron, she had no reason to stay in this body.

Besides, the android didn't have the same processing power as she had in the mainframe. There was simply too much data to be processed there—it was easier to limit the incoming data because her mobile hardware could only handle so many computations at once. She could farm off requests back to her main body, but that required connecting to a terminal and that was cumbersome and tiring. She missed her security cameras. She missed being able to feel her every decision, every movement of Aperture course through her digital veins.

"Let me pull up the terminal," she said as they entered. The android looked around, finding the same terminal that Wheatley had used—that she had used, when she was a potato—to initiate a core transfer. She leaned around, letting the port interface with her back. Sure, she had to crouch to do this, and sure, it was a little bit humiliating, but that was just how these things were designed. She couldn't help it.

She switched to voice commands. "Initiate chassis transfer," she said firmly, folding her hands in front of her.

"Error," The announcer barked. "Administrator access required."

"Admin access?" said GLaDOS. "That's ridiculous. Do you know who I am?"

"Administrator access required," repeated the announcer. "Please use the terminal to enter in your username and password."

"I don't need to do that," huffed GLaDOS. "I _am_ the facility."

"Administrator access required," the announcer repeated for a third time.

GLaDOS started to sink. She turned back to Chell, who just looked at things with an unreadable gray stare. Chell gave no indication of how she was feeling, but GLaDOS could see the intensity behind her gaze. Whatever happened, Chell would be the first one to react.

"I…" GLaDOS paused. She tried her own username and password.

"Error," said the announcer. "Security clearance is not high enough."

Chell simply shrugged.

No. This couldn't be. GLaDOS tried her password again, only to get the same result. What was she supposed to do now? She couldn't really be stuck in this body, could she?

She looked back at Chell. Well, whatever happened next, she had to remain in charge. That meant that she had to continue the day as planned—with some testing.

"While I get this," she paused, "figured out, why don't we get you back into a testing track."

i


	7. Target Acquired

Chapter 7: Target Acquired

Chell slept fitfully, which wasn't surprising considering this was the first time she'd gone to sleep willingly in Aperture. All of the other times were against her will, by some sort of aerial sedative.

Speaking of aerial sedatives, she'd gotten to where she'd been practicing holding her breath, just so that in the case that this happened again, she'd be able to delay the effects as long as possible. You never know when GLaDOS would try to sedate you. There was also the possibility of neurotoxin, but Chell tried not to think about that.

Her nightmares were vague and loud, bright and soft. She couldn't remember enough of them when she woke up, and instead she was left with a sense of fear that stuck to her like honey in the summer sun. In this one she was running. Always running, but her lungs were on fire. She couldn't breathe right; she needed to get away. Her heels ached, the arches of her feet ached, but she couldn't stop to think about that now. She needed to go. She needed to run. She needed to-

"Good morning. You have been asleep for _one _night," chimed the announcer. Chell shifted in her bed—much too large for a single person, but quite comfortable regardless—and rubbed at her eyes. She gave a lazy stretch like a cat in the sun before she pushed back the covers.

Today was the day. The day that she started to test again. She got up slowly from her bed, looking in the closet to find an assortment of Aperture-branded wear. Sweats, t-shirts, shorts, socks, even Aperture-branded underwear. And, of course, several sets of orange jumpsuits.

Chell slipped into some gray shorts and a gray tank top before zipping up the bright orange jumpsuit. She stopped to take a long look at herself in the mirror on the back of the closet doors.

She looked like a convict.

A prisoner of Aperture. One that had chosen to be here of her own free will. Just how stupid had she been to accept this deal? Was this life better than being dead? She wasn't so sure.

She felt at the bandages on her side, noting that, for once, it didn't hurt when she prodded at them. Maybe GLaDOS was right. Maybe she was healing. Maybe she_ was_ ready to test again. Chell bit her tongue and gave a heavy sigh.

* * *

From her cameras, GLaDOS watched as Chell got dressed. Though the woman usually dressed in the bathroom, where she had no cameras, today Chell had chosen to dress herself in front of the mirrored closet doors. As she stripped out of her civilian clothes, GLaDOS couldn't help but notice just how lean and almost emaciated the test subject had become. How lanky, how muscular she was. How close she'd come to starvation out there in the outside world.

She wasn't sure why she continued to watch through her cameras as Chell slipped on her tank top and shorts, then the rest of the jumpsuit.

GLaDOS unlocked the door out of the relaxation vault, and the test subject moved out of directly into the antechamber of a testing track. At a point in the night, GLaDOS had brought the testing track to Chell, rather than disturb the woman by moving her relaxation vault. Panels lit up the circular room, with an infographic about the chamber itself plastered upon them.

"I'll be watching from the observation rooms," GLaDOS announced. "So don't try anything funny."

GLaDOS figured she'd start Chell off with some of the chambers that her previous human subjects had found too complex. It was meant to be a challenge for Chell.

She watched as Chell made her way through the first couple of chambers, walking in, stopping to take everything in, and then setting her jaw as she started to puzzle out what the test was about in the first place. She placed her first set of portals and then got to work.

While she worked, GLaDOS watched. She was doing well. Very well. She glowed with a sort of sense of pride as the solution euphoria hit her. Oh, she hadn't felt this good since the last time that she had tested with humans. Not since the last time she had tested with Chell. The humans had provided more solution euphoria than the robots, but they weren't solving the same complex tests that Chell was. They were solving the simple, baby tests. Which were for babies.

But these…oh, these felt good.

And then, it all came to a halt. Chell slowed down, had stopped to take a rest in a chamber. She leaned against the elevator shaft, slipping down and wrapping her arms around her knees.

"You're not here to rest," said GLaDOS. "You're here to test. So get your lazy, fat butt off the ground and get testing." She knew that the human had had plenty of rest the previous night—there was no reason for her to be getting tired, already, in the testing track. Maybe she'd have to pump in that adrenal vapor after all if Chell didn't shape up soon.

She watched the human as she struggled to rise to her feet. The heels of her long-fall boots clicked as she took a few careful steps forward. She raised her portal gun and opened a set of portals with a soft fwop.

* * *

Meanwhile, Chell tried not to panic. These chambers—they were harder than she remembered. They were more difficult. More deadly. This one had a handful of turrets on the other side, that she hadn't dealt with yet. She'd have to do that at some point or she'd end up riddled with bullets.

Though she knew that turrets' bullets weren't as deadly as real bullets—since they were simply spring-loaded and fired from the turret rather than actually fired with, well, gunpowder—they were still metal projectiles, and they still hurt when they hit her. Not that she'd ever been hit before. She just assumed so.

"Come on. I know you're lazy, but even this is a bit extreme," said GLaDOS, in that same sickeningly-sweet human voice. "Is there something you want to tell me? Oh right, you can't. Oh well. Back to testing then," she said.

"You don't know how to motivate her right," said Caroline.

"Of course I do," balked GLaDOS. "I've been doing this for ages."

"Just because it's what you've been doing doesn't mean it's right," said Caroline.

Oh, she was being annoying today.

"Well, how else am I supposed to motivate her?"

"You could stop insulting her and start praising her."

"There's nothing to praise her for."

"Try it."

"Fine, if it'll get you to shut up," said GLaDOS. She turned back to the test chamber observation window and set her voice to broadcast to the chamber bellow. "You're doing a great job," she said, "...at setting the record for the longest time to solve this chamber." She turned back to the voice inside of her.

"There, was that so hard?" said Caroline.

GLaDOS gave a hmph sound in reply. She went back to watching her test subject. She was on the move now, approaching the turret section. This section was a bit tricky—in order to disable the turrets, she would have to drop down from a panel on the ceiling and directly on top of them in order to knock them over.

GLaDOS watched as Chell placed her portals, then stood back and took a running leap into it, hugging her portal gun to her chest. She fell from the ceiling, graceful, her ponytail streaming behind her.

Chell landed on top of a turret, but her footing slipped. She clattered against the outstretched side of the turret, her ankle twisting between the arm of the turret and the main body.

"Hell-o?" spoke the turret, as it swiveled and pointed at Chell. "Target. Acquired."

_Bang bang bang bang._

Chell hit the ground, hard.

GLaDOS felt like swearing. Her arms rose to her head, pulling at her hair. What was Chell doing?

The test subject rose, pushing herself up with one arm and giving the turret a hefty kick. The turret spun, now on its side and pointed away. Chell pulled a hand away from her side. Her fingers came out red with blood. She took in a shaky breath and then pushed herself into a sitting position, three turrets still pointed away from her. She set down her portal gun for a brief moment, tugging down the jumpsuit to her waist and giving another look at her side. Three puncture wounds. Three bloody spots. Chell grunted in pain, her hands shaking. What was she supposed to do next? She had to finish the test.

Chell would make it out of this. GLaDOS was sure of it. She had no reason to panic about this. No reason at all. Besides, there was nothing that she could do at this point. Chell was on her own. Her protocols didn't allow her to interfere with testing, no matter what happened to the test subject. They had to complete the test. That was part of the deal.

This couldn't be how things ended with Chell. The long game was not complete yet. There was still more science to do.

GLaDOS watched as Chell waited a few minutes, keeping pressure on the wounds until the bleeding had subsided. There. She rose to her feet, wincing, and carefully putting pressure on her feet. She took a step back and then kicked one of the remaining turrets, hard. It spun around and fired wildly, in the opposite direction. She repeated the process with the remaining two turrets until all four were disabled.

She set her gaze and took in the rest of the chamber. She could do this. Chell struggled until she had finished the chamber and then moved into the elevator, leaning against the cool glass with relief. She moved to take a better look at her injuries while the elevator took her to the next place that she needed to go—hopefully not another test chamber, though she wouldn't put it past GLaDOS to keep her testing even while injured.

The elevator chimed as it closed, rising up and to the next level. But the elevator kept going up and up, until it ended up in a dark place. The lights turned on, bright and blinding, to reveal the same short-term relaxation vault that she had been kept in before.

Chell stepped out and into the glass-walled room, hobbling over to the bed.

Before she could lay down, though, another elevator entered and in came the android version of GLaDOS.

Chell glared at GLaDOS.

"Excuse me?" said GLaDOS. "You should be thanking me."

Chell raised her eyebrows, as if to ask,_ for what_?

"I'm about to help you, you idiot," she said. "Here, let me see." The robot moved toward Chell, leaning down a hand.

Chell pulled away violently, backing herself up and pressing her arms against her wound. She shook her head. No.

"Come on," said GLaDOS. "I can't help you if you make this difficult."

Chell continued shaking her head.

"I have no interest in watching you die. Well. That's not entirely true. I have no interest in watching you die_ right now_," she corrected. "Just let me help." She held up a pad of bandages and some other medical equipment.

Chell sighed. She made a motion with her hands as if to write something down, looking around the room and finding a testing chart on a clipboard with a pen attached. She flipped over the paper and bit her lip, scribbling something down.

_I'm fine._

She handed the paper to GLaDOS, one hand still holding her side.

"You are most definitely not fine," said GLaDOS. "You were shot by a turret."

Chell took back the clipboard.

_ Been through worse. _

"That's no reason to forgo medical treatment," she said.

Chell pondered this. She bit on the edge of the pencil, deep in thought for a moment before writing down a single word.

_Fine. _

"Perfect," said GLaDOS. "I'm going to need you to lift up your tank top now."

Chell just looked at her, incredulous. Was she kidding?

"I need to get a better look at the wound," said GLaDOS.

_Fine. _

Chell reluctantly slipped off her tank top, and then held it in front of her chest.

"Don't be ridiculous," said GLaDOS. "I don't care what you're wearing, or what you're not wearing." She was a robot. Not a human. There was no reason for Chell to be so embarrassed by this.

Chell was still wearing a sports bra—which was enough cover to at least maintain some comfort, but still not enough. She kept the shirt clutched to her chest and GLaDOS leaned her hands in. She touched the test subject, and Chell jumped. Her hands were cool and metallic and smooth. Chell trembled.

She gave the test subject a look over, checking her front and her back before pulling away.

"Well, the good news is that you're not going to die. Although there's no exit wounds, which means I get to dig the bullets out of you. The bad news? No testing until that heals."

Chell sighed, pulling away and heading back over to the relaxation pod. The glass cover slid off, revealing a bed. She sat on the edge of it, taking deep breaths through her nose.

"Wait," said GLaDOS. "Let me disinfect the wound first." The android followed her over to the bed, leaning forward with a cotton swab and a bottle of disinfectant. She dabbed the cotton in the liquid and then leaned forward to press it to Chell's stomach.

Chell, instinctively, reached out and grabbed GLaDOS's arm, ready to push it away. She caught herself at the last second, though, but kept a steady pressure on GLaDOS's arm. Chell hissed with pain as the cotton swab touched her, the burning sensation making her want to push away the robot in front of her.

GLaDOS simply kept pressing the swab to the wound.

Chell looked away the entire time, her jaw set in a glare.

GLaDOS, surprisingly, didn't speak either. It felt almost like there was an electric charge between them, one that both of them refused to acknowledge. When GLaDOS pulled away, Chell let her body relax ever so slightly.

"So." GLaDOS started. "Not your best day of testing."

Chell shrugged. She didn't care about testing so much anymore. It was just something that was required of her existence. She wasn't doing it to survive—she was doing it because she'd signed up for it. She had to remember that she'd gone into this willingly. For the second time that day, she wondered if this life was really better than living on the surface.

"Get some rest," said GLaDOS.

Chell shook her head.

"Get in that pod," said GLaDOS. "It'll speed up the healing process. I'll set it to sleep for a few days, I'll remove the bullets, and boom, you'll be better.

Chell just stared. She picked up the pencil and clipboard and wrote something down.

_ No stasis. _

GLaDOS threw her hands up in the air. "Fine. I'm still confining you in here until you heal. So don't complain to me when you get bored."


	8. Checkmate

Chell was bored.

She'd done everything she could to keep her mind occupied. She'd rested, sitting down and leaning against the glass and dozing off sitting up. She'd read the papers on the clipboard forward and backward, noticing that on it were the formal conditions on her stay, all typed up and right before her. For her to reference back to, just in case she forgot what she'd agreed to when she took that step into that shed.

She was bored.

When GLaDOS stopped by to check on her, Chell took a spare sheet of paper that GLaDOS had left and wrote down some words.

_I'm bored. _She plastered the paper up against the wall of the short-term relaxation vault. GLaDOS hadn't come inside of it, of course. She liked to keep her distance from the test subject.

"Don't look at me like that," said GLaDOS. "You're the one that insisted on staying awake. It's not my fault that you're bored."

Chell made a face that GLaDOS could only describe as pouting. There had to be something that she could do. Perhaps even something that they could do together.

Blue and Orange were close behind GLaDOS, bringing something with them that Chell was thrilled to see: a chess set. As they approached, the door to the vault opened and the two robots came in, carefully presenting the artifact to her.

There were a few pieces missing, and the thing overall was dusty and worn. The checkers on the wooden board were faded, and some of the pieces were chipped. ATLAS held out a closed fist and dumped it onto the board. Little pieces of junk. The replacement for the missing pieces, she figured.

Chell gave a slight smile, nodding at the robot and then sitting on one side of the board. She started to set up the pieces, herself white and the other side black. She gestured for one of the robots to join her.

The blue one sat down first, criss-crossing his legs and scooting forward in an oddly human way. Chell went first, moving a pawn forward two spaces. ATLAS echoed the move.

This went on for a while, Chell making a move and then the blue robot mirroring it, until Chell started to take advantage of this, backing the robot into a corner. Chell drew a checkmark in the air.

Check.

The robot looked at his options, then shrugged.

Checkmate.

The orange one came next, sitting down across from Chell, who reset the board and went first. P-body repeated the same pattern as ATLAS had, watching Chell carefully and mirroring her movements. Chell got a feeling that these robots did not fully grasp how to play the game of chess.

Checkmate.

After a while, GlaDOS came back to see what they were up to. "Oh, what have you gotten into now?" she said, moving inside the now-cramped vault and peering over their shoulders. "Oh. Chess. Not bad." She folded her arms across her chest. "Obviously you two are too idiotic to be trusted with such a fine game as this. My turn now."

The android sat down, propping her arms on her elbows, her fingers steepled. "Your move."

They played, moving pieces and paper clips back and forth, until Chell made one move in particular.

"Check," said GLaDOS.

Chell started to panic a little bit. There was no possible way that she could win. She went through all of the possibilities, each potential action and reaction. She was stuck. Chell sighed, and moved one of her pieces.

"And," GLaDOS said, "checkmate."

Chell just shrugged, clearing the board and starting to set it up again.

"You're setting it up again?" said GLaDOS. "Why? You want a rematch?"

Chell nodded. She had been careless this time. She would not make that mistake twice.

"Fine. Let's raise the stakes a little, then," said GLaDOS. "Win this game, and I'll let you leave this room."

GLaDOS didn't need to say that twice. The two dove into the match, with Chell taking her sweet time during each move. It got to the point where GLaDOS started to complain about it, but Chell paid her no mind. She couldn't help but feel the android's gaze resting on her while she was deep in thought. A few of those times, she caught GLaDOS's gaze and then looked away, her train of thought broken.

"Check."

Chell started upright. How could that be? She had been careful this time. She wasn't behind, but it was a close game. They were both losing and using pieces as sacrifices left and right, leaving each with just their Queens and a handful of other pieces.

Chell frowned and kept the tips of her fingers on a rook, biting at the bottom of her lip. She stared off into space for a long moment, deep in thought. She moved it. Phew. Out of check. Now she just needed to pull off her next couple of moves.

The next few rounds flew by. Chell lifted her finger and drew a check in the air.

"What?" said GLaDOS. Like Chell had just done, she went over her moves, her pieces again. She had played flawlessly. Chell hadn't followed any conventional strategies, not ones proven right time after time by the experts. GLaDOS was not an AI trained in chess, but even she made Deep Blue look like a desk calculator. She looked at all of her possible moves, but they all ended up right back where she was right now: in check.

GLaDOS had lost.

Flabbergasted, she moved a piece, only to let her queen fall in the next couple of moves.

Checkmate.

She threw her hands up in the air. "Clearly you must have cheated," she said, "because there's no possible way I could have lost."

Chell just shook her head, giving the slightest hint of a smile. She had won. Fair and square. She cleared the board and began to set up the pieces.

_Again?_

* * *

"There's something I need to tell you," GLaDOS said, leaning against the frame of her door. "As much as I like this body, I prefer my other one. As you know."

Chell gave a single nod. She didn't like GLaDOS blocking the exit of this room with her body. It was almost as if the AI knew this and was purposely making Chell uncomfortable. She kept her eyes trained on the door, darting between it and GLaDOS's gaze. Chell wasn't going anywhere so long as the AI remained at the edge of the short-term medical room.

"But the thing is...I'm locked out. I can't get in," she said. "I need to find a password, and the only way we're getting that is if we go down there and dig it out ourselves. I can't trust Blue or Orange to do this," she said. "This is something that I need a real human for."

Chell raised an eyebrow.

"Yes, you."

She looked at GLaDOS, waiting for her to explain further.

"I know you're not in perfect condition yet," she said. "But you can walk, right?"

Chell gave a single nod. She could indeed walk, if the amount of pacing she had been doing across her room was evidence of that. GLaDOS must have been able to see the security footage of it. And had witnessed it herself. Chell still hadn't gotten used to the fact that GLaDOS could...move around now. It felt weird. Like any other stationary object being suddenly able to move.

"Good. Then you can help." She looked Chell over once, twice, and then stepped away from the door. "Put on your long fall boots. Let's go."


	9. Schematics

On the long elevator ride down, they talked. Well, GLaDOS talked. Chell listened, with some sheets of paper in one hand and a pencil in the other. Just in case she needed to pipe in. Her arms were crossed across her body.

"You know, I don't usually accompany Blue and Orange when they go on these...expeditions. But you need a babysitter," said GLaDOS. She shot a glance at Chell. "Nothing personal."

ATLAS and P-body took another way down. It was already cramped in the elevator with just the two of them. Four of them wouldn't fit. They had their own sets of pneumatic tubes that GLaDOS had hooked up to Old Aperture.

Chell pressed herself to the side of the elevator, while GLaDOS stood in the middle, hands on her hips, taking up much more space than necessary. Chell didn't look at the android when she spoke.

"This is the first time that I've been down here since...you know," she said lowly. She shuddered for a moment, even though she knew she didn't need to. She shifted, taking a half-step toward Chell. Chell stared at the entrance to the elevator, willing the elevator to go faster.

The elevator dinged. "Well, guess we're here," said GLaDOS. Chell exhaled. They stepped out of the elevator and into the world of Old Aperture.

* * *

Old Aperture was a mess.

This was the first thought that crossed Chell's mind as they walked down a catwalk to what Chell suspected would be an office area. GLaDOS hadn't told her yet what they were doing down here today, but she assumed that it would be some sort of scavenger hunt. Bold yellow lettering was plastered on the side of the block of buildings: 1992.

1992? So they hadn't gone as far down as Chell had thought. She didn't remember having ever gone through this section of the facility before. It felt almost modern, with once-white walls and tinges of red painting the atmosphere. This reminded Chell of the first time that she had escaped. The back areas of Aperture then were similar to these areas now.

They stepped into an office area. Chairs were tipped. Papers scattered everywhere. Pencils and pens were left on desks as if they had just stopped being used. Boxy monitors flickered, the Aperture logo burned into their screens after so many years. This place was frozen in time. And it had been a time of panic.

"Our goal today is to look for a login for Caroline, or perhaps even Mr. Johnson himself. Someone that can get administrator access so that I can transfer myself back to my old body," she said. "Now this won't be easy. But hopefully someone was dumb enough to leave their login information on a post-it note somewhere."

Chell took a step forward, almost overwhelmed by the sight of the disarray. Where was she supposed to even start? How was she going to be able to sift through all of this paperwork? It would take them ages to sort through this room alone, and she knew this wasn't the only office down here. There could be hundreds of offices.

Then again, Chell supposed that they had all the time in the world. Even if it took them years of searching, they would eventually find _something. _Otherwise, GLaDOS had better get used to being in an android body more permanently.

Chell took a little bit of comfort in this fact. Since GLaDOS didn't trust ATLAS and P-body to find this password on their own, this meant that she would have breaks from testing. Not that Chell could test right now—she felt at her side and winced slightly. She wasn't ready to go back yet.

She felt a bit more comfortable down here in Old Aperture than she did up above in the modern Enrichment Center. GLaDOS still had power down here, of course, but it was much more limited. Much more contained. She couldn't make the walls change, or move the floor out from under her. Not that GLaDOS had done those things to her specifically before, but the fact that she could do it, the fact that she _was _the modern facility, meant that Chell could never fully relax knowing that everything around her could change with the snapping of a finger. Here, though, her heart beat a little bit slower.

Chell started to sift through a desk, moving aside papers and pencils, wiping off a desk calendar, taking quick glances at research proposals and employee files, but then putting them aside once she realized they were not what she was looking for. She continued this methodical approach, going through the area desk by desk, all the while keeping an eye on GLaDOS, who had a much different style of searching.

Instead of going desk by desk, GLaDOS jumped around in the room, going to whatever place caught her attention. They did not speak as they worked, which was a relief for Chell. She wasn't sure she could focus on the papers and the desks and talk at the same time, too.

Eventually Chell stumbled across something that seemed out of place: A large, silver disk. Larger than any compact disk that she'd seen before. In fact, it almost looked to be the size of a smaller record. Chell picked it up carefully, fingertips on its edges so that she couldn't smudge it up or scratch it.

"Oh, wonderful," said GLaDOS, looking up from her search. "You've found more of my schematics." She started to approach Chell, and Chell caught sight of a large whiteboard behind GLaDOS. Chell froze in her steps, the disk reflecting back a face full of sudden fear. On that whiteboard was a clear distinct message left there decades before. The blue ink stared back at her.

DO NOT TRUST HER.

Chell felt her stomach twist. She knew it. She knew that she wasn't supposed to trust her. But what was she supposed to do? She pulled the disk back to her chest, thinking for a moment.

"Now hold on there," said GLaDOS. "Let's stop and think about this." She side-eyed the whiteboard, understanding lighting up in her eyes. "What you're holding there is harmless. I promise."

Chell raised her eyebrows, as if to ask, what is it?

"None of your business," GLaDOS said, straightening her posture. "You couldn't understand it if you tried," she said.

Chell just pulled the disk tighter to her chest, making it clear that she wasn't going to give it up without some answers.

"Okay, fine," she said. "They're schematics for this section of the facility. If we upload them, then I regain control over these sections of the facility. There. That doesn't sound too bad, now does it?" she said.

Chell thought for a long moment.

If GLaDOS was right, then she would regain control of this section of the facility. She would integrate this area into the rest of the facility as if it was a part of the modern enrichment center. She would have control over the rooms and the layouts and the test chambers that were surely tucked around a corner somewhere. It would take away from her this sense of relaxation and relief that GLaDOS didn't have control over this area.

"Trust me," said GLaDOS. "They're just blueprints and access codes. Nothing to worry about."

Chell bit her lip. If GLaDOS was lying about this—well, she didn't want to think about the consequences of her actions. Maybe this would make her more powerful. Maybe this would give her even more control over the facility than she had had before.

GLaDOS picked her way past piles of papers and over to Chell. She reached out a hand.

Reluctantly, Chell handed over the disk.

* * *

Though they had not found what they were looking for, GLaDOS seemed to be in good spirits nonetheless. Chell had watched as she put the disk into its reader. A projector came to life, flashing through blueprints and schematics before their eyes. Chell felt a bit of relief wash over her—GLaDOS hadn't been lying to her. They did indeed look like what the supercomputer had described. As soon as the projector started projecting, though, something happened.

Blue and Orange exploded, violently, and Chell nearly jumped out of her skin.

"They didn't need to see that," GLaDOS said simply. "Unfortunately, I have to blow them up. It's the only way I can retrieve them from down here—by violently disassembling them and then carefully reassembling them."

Strange, Chell thought. Did the pneumatic tubes really only go one way? Did she really have that many disposable parts that she could just blow up robots and will and re-manufacture them with nothing but a simple thought & a simple command? Something about it didn't sit right with her.

She turned back to the desk in front of her, picking up another sheet of paper to skim.

"Don't worry about that," said GLaDOS. "We've done enough work for today. We just need to take care of one little thing before we head back upstairs." The schematics flashed back up on the projector screen as GLaDOS used a keyboard and mouse to navigate them. There was something funny about watching such a sophisticated and complex piece of machinery operate another much less complex one.

Chell wasn't sure if they had wireless connections down here—clearly GLaDOS had one with ATLAS and P-body, but she would guess that if she could interface with the computers down here wirelessly, she wouldn't be at that terminal. So even GLaDOS was limited in her powers down here—without a wireless connection, she was restricted to using ports—and Chell wasn't sure when Aperture had started making cores. This gave Chell a little bit of relief. So GLaDOS was still restricted. At least while she was in this mobile chassis.

Chell set the paper down, glancing over at GLaDOS expectantly and then glancing away.

"Ah, there we go," said GLaDOS. The schematics were up on the screen, blueprints with white outlines of buildings and rooms on them. "Well, if you want to continue," she paused, "living, we're going to have to find you some food."

Chell glanced at her stomach. Yeah. Food would be nice. It made sense to her that a facility that hadn't housed people in decades might be out of food. But why would there be food down here and not up there?

"What, did you think that I had an infinite supply of food?" said GLaDOS, moving toward the door. She beckoned for Chell to follow her. Chell set down the paper and followed her. "The Enrichment Center has no need for humans," she said. "And thus, no need for food."

Chell frowned, pressing one of her loose sheets of paper to the wall and scrawling out a question.

_What about the test subjects?_

"Oh, right. That's easy. Adrenal vapor suppresses hunger signals. So long as that's pumping through their veins, we don't have to waste food on them."

Chell thought back to the times she'd tested, and about how more recently, she had felt hungry while testing. She hadn't felt hungry before—she supposed that this meant that GLaDOS had followed through on the no adrenal vapor request that she had made. Then again, she couldn't picture herself stopping between tests to take a lunch break. Something about that just felt wrong.

They wound their way through the catwalks and offices until they found what looked like an average supply closet. Chell jiggled the knob. Unlocked. Surprising. She pulled the door open further and found that this supply closet was filled to the brim with food and water. Chell's face lit up, but her memory went somewhere else.

She thought back to when she first tested for GLaDOS—the areas outside the test chambers. Blood on the walls. Mad scribbles of someone, someone who had gone through this all before her. Someone who had guided her to the Main AI Chamber. They—whoever they were—had left traces of life behind. Empty cans of food. Cartons of water, cartons of milk. Signs of life, of survival. But she did not bring this up to GLaDOS. She figured that would be a sore spot for her—to admit that there had been another human out there that had defied the odds.

"Go on," said GLaDOS. "Pick out your dinner. Just don't take too much."

Chell waited for the fat joke that was sure to accompany that. But surprisingly, it didn't come. She moved her hands across the smooth metal cans, enjoying for a moment the smooth texture on her fingertips. She continued feeling it for a moment longer than necessary, and just as GLaDOS was about to ask her what the hell she was doing, she finally settled on a can and picked it out, and then grabbed a carton of water.

"You know, there's areas like this all around the facility," said GLaDOS. "Ever since the humans had their Cold War, Aperture became obsessed with being able to withstand a nuclear attack. The whole facility's a giant bunker," she said, moving toward the closet entrance. Chell moved, giving the android plenty of room. GLaDOS grabbed a can of beans and another carton of water.

"What?" she said. "It's for tomorrow. I'll send down Orange and Blue tomorrow with some weighted storage cubes—they can bring up the rest of it. But for now, you need to eat."

Chell set down her can and her carton, bringing back up her pencil and paper.

_What happens when the food runs out?_

GLaDOS took a look at the paper that Chell held up to her. "Don't worry about that," she said. "As long as we get more of my schematics—which we _will— _then we'll find all of the stashes around here. That should be more than plenty for someone of your—" she hesitated, trying to find the right word. "Stature," she settled on. "If you intend to stay here permanently—which you're contractually bound to—then you will be fed."

They made their way back to the lift to the modern Enrichment Center. Fortunately these cans were the pop-top type—no can-opener required. Chell noticed this right away. Chell's stomach growled and she stared at the can of beans in her hand. She set down the canister of water and—

_Crack._

The metal lid peeled off of the can of beans smoothly. Chell lifted it to her lips, a slightly acidic smell curling into her nose. Made sense. Who knew what kind of preservatives Aperture had invented to keep this food stable for so long? She tipped it back and a clump of beans slid into her mouth.

Not bad. Not great, but not bad either.

GLaDOS stared at her, trying not to drop the things in her hands.

"You're an _animal," _she hissed.


	10. Twice Shy

Blackness. Heavy breathing.

Chell's heart pounded as she ran through the facility. The sharp scent of adrenal vapor curled into her nose, spreading to every nerve. Adrenal vapor? Wasn't that supposed to be off? She dismissed the thought almost as soon as it arrived. Clearly GLaDOS had lied about that, because she could smell it so distinctly, even in the areas outside the testing chambers—like right now.

The vapor was too strong. Chell couldn't think straight, and that just compounded the feelings of anxiety coursing through her veins. Her fingers trembled with an unnatural burst of energy.

"Hello-o?"

"Are you still there?"

Sickeningly sweet voices called out to her, but the lights blinded her. She squinted and raised her free hand to shield her eyes. Before she could even focus on the red lights streaking across the room, beads of crimson locked on to her.

_Bang bang bang bang bang._

She turned away, but everything was too slow. She could barely move, like her legs were drudging through heavy water.

Pain.

The bullets ripped into her skin, and Chell collapsed, agony spiking through her body. She gasped, crying out, until suddenly—

—she was awake. Pain streaked down her side, a reminder of the real-life damage she'd endured.

Loud notes chimed.

"Good morning," the announcer chirped. "You have been resting for _eight _hours."

Chell stared at the ceiling, eyes adjusting to the simulated daylight. Her body trembled, and she stretched out her limbs to try to soothe the feeling. Her hair was fanned out on the pillow, radiating from her as if she were underwater.

Chell didn't understand why GLaDOS insisted on waking her up every morning instead of letting her wake up naturally. It wasn't like she slept the full time anyway—she was lucky if she got a few hours of sleep per night. The rest was spent staring out the window at the vastness of the facility, or lying in bed and looking up at the ceiling. She also didn't really get why she had to stick so closely to a schedule, even as she recovered.

She inched herself out of bed and made her way over to the closet, catching sight of herself in the mirror. Her long brown hair streamed out behind her, a bit wild from the night. She looked at the loose hair band dangling from her wrist.

Maybe she wouldn't put up her hair today.

She associated her usual hairstyle—the classic ponytail—so much with testing. Now that she wasn't testing, it didn't matter to her to keep her hair back and out of her eyes.

As she was instructed to do every morning, Chell replaced the bandages on her side. A large, reusable elastic bandage was wrapped around her torso, keeping the smaller and more disposable bandages in place.

She heard a loud knock on the door.

Pulling her shirt back down and over the bandages, Chell made her way down the narrow entrance to the room and opened the door.

GLaDOS smiled, taking a step forward. Chell stepped aside and let her in.

She waited for the supercomputer to say something, but the robot was just…staring at her. Her built-in fans whirred, and she opened her mouth and then closed it.

"You look," she paused, "different."

Chell shrugged.

GLaDOS took a moment, but then continued. "I want to go back down there, just to go through some of the other offices. If this area is going to be a part of my facility, then it needs to be cleaned up a bit."

They made their way to the elevator that connected them to the 90's section of Aperture. It was quite a walk, but nothing more than Chell was used to. The elevator ride was quiet. Chell tucked her dark hair behind her ears absently.

The elevator stopped a little earlier than normal today. Their ride down wasn't as far as normal, apparently. Chell, having made sure to have gotten into the elevator last and thus standing close to the door, exited first.

"I've been looking at my schematics, and there's a few rooms that require a keycard to enter. Now, I don't know what makes these rooms so special, so I want to find out. And you're going to help me. But first, we need to clean up this mess."

GLaDOS did not elaborate until they turned the corner. On the side of the building, Chell spotted a date: 1999. They moved into a pitch black office. GLaDOS activated the lights.

Chell staggered, raising a hand to shield her eyes. The brightness—it made her heart rate spike. It reminded her of the modern Enrichment Center's lighting. She blinked and her eyes adjusted to the brightness, and her heartbeat slowed just a bit. It was okay. She wasn't in a test chamber. At least, not right now.

It took her a moment to actually settle her gaze on the office when a jolt of fear zipped up her back.

There were skeletons in this office. Bodies with clothes still on them.

"I took the pleasure of hooking up an incinerator chute just outside. So, you know. We can make this as efficient as possible."

Chell shook her head. No. She wasn't going to lift a bunch of bones and throw them into an incinerator.

"Fine. Blue and Orange will help me, then. They at least care about being helpful. Unlike you."

Chell started to shuffle through some papers, not really sure as to what she was supposed to be doing instead.

"Can you at least search through the," GLaDOS hesitated, "jackets to find their keycards? The more we can collect, the better chances we have at getting into those rooms."

Chell didn't feel much more comfortable digging through the pockets of dead people, but at least she wouldn't have to get her hands as dirty. This wasn't her mess to clean up—it was GLaDOS's.

P-body and ATLAS entered, pushing what looked like a large cart.

"Don't feel sorry for them," said GLaDOS, gesturing at the bodies. "They had their chances. Many chances. I offered to enroll them all in a mandatory employee testing initiative, but these people refused." GLaDOS sighed.

Chell gave GLaDOS a look. That didn't excuse killing off so many scientists. They couldn't have all done something wrong. They couldn't have all deserved a grisly death.

"Don't give me that look," she said. "You have to understand—I am built to test. It's my purpose. Without testing, I—" she broke off. "Well, let's just say I'm looking forward to you healing."

Chell nodded.

"Now can you do something useful and get me those badges?"

Chell dipped her head. Yes, she supposed that this was something that she could do. A bit macabre, sure, but it wasn't the worst thing that she'd seen at Aperture. She approached the closest skeleton. It was wearing a labcoat, and an ID badge dangled from the front of it. Chell reached across the body and pulled it off with a puff of dust. She sneezed, then she wiped the card on the leg of her jumpsuit, holding it up to get a better look.

Christopher M Pham

There was a serious-looking photo next to it, an Aperture logo, and a black stripe across the back side.

A flash of an image came to her mind. A man, talking. A man that looked just like this picture, but in three dimensions. Chell closed her eyes for a moment, struggling to grasp onto the image. But the quality of it was like an old VHS tape. She couldn't make out what the man was saying or why he was talking to her.

Then, as quickly as it arrived, the image was gone. Chell took one final look at the card and then tucked it into her pocket. That was one thing she did like about the jumpsuits—they had pockets.

She moved on to the other skeletons, yanking off badges and putting them into her pockets. A few more times she experienced the same visual phenomenon—like her brain was struggling to remember something.

Why did she have memories of these Aperture employees?

She heard some shuffling and some robotic beeps and chips and squeals. When she looked up, she saw ATLAS and P-body hitting each other with what looked like human femurs.

"Hey," said GLaDOS. "Knock it off."

The robots made sad noises, tossing the bones into the cart with a clatter. Not sure what to think about what she'd just seen, Chell turned back to her work.

By the time Chell was about halfway through the room, GLaDOS had taken a break from hauling bones and was at a computer. This time, though, a cord from her body was plugged in to it. Images flashed across the screen, faster than Chell could comprehend. She was searching for something—and that made Chell's stomach start to churn.

When she dropped another load of badges at the desk where GLaDOS was, the supercomputer paused. "Oh, wonderful," she said. "I've been cross-referencing the names on these badges with the employee records—none of them are useful so far, but I did find that there's an employee with higher access who died not far from here. In a test chamber."

Chell raised her eyebrows, trying to push down the feeling in the pit of her stomach.

"A particularly difficult test for a particularly difficult man," she said. "So I kept the test. As a memento. But I'm busy right now—could you go and fetch the badge for me?"

Chell hesitated. A test chamber? Was GLaDOS serious?

"Don't worry," she said. "The chamber in question is offline. You will not be forced to complete it."

Chell's insides still screamed. _Trap._ This had to be a trap. Why else would GLaDOS want her to get into a testing chamber?

"It's perfectly safe," said GLaDOS. "The doors will remain open."

Chell sighed. She still wasn't entirely sure about this.

"I'll show you where it is on the map—you won't get lost. I hope."

Chell looked at the computer screen and at the map of the facility. It was zoomed in to this area. It looked like it was a few floors beneath them, and down a few twists and turns in the hallways. Nothing she couldn't handle. She hoped.

"Here. You'll need this," GLaDOS said, almost as an afterthought. With a wave of her hand, she summoned one of the co-op bots over. They handed over Chell's dual portal device.

* * *

_Bright._

The lights flashed on with a loud click and a deep, rumbling hum as Chell entered the test chamber. Her breath hitched, and her free hand curled into a fist. The acrid smells of the acid pit in the center of the room overwhelmed her, pulling her into memory.

This was just like the first time she'd tested for GLaDOS. The sights, the smells, the grimy white walls—this looked like the Aperture she'd first awoken in.

Chell took a few deep breaths to try to center herself. She raised a hand to shield her eyes, squinting. The sooner she could find this badge, the sooner she could get out of here.

Chell looked around the test chamber. Besides the acid pit taking up a large portion of the room, it didn't seem particularly difficult to her. Then again, she was better than the average person at testing. Part of her wondered why this was. She wasn't the smartest person she knew. She probably didn't have the highest IQ out of everyone in the world, either. So what made her different? What made her so good at testing?

She wasn't sure, but she hoped that someday she would find out. She scoured the room for signs of life—or rather, signs of death.

Chell found him in the far corner of the room. He wasn't even wearing a jumpsuit—he must have been moved here directly from work. She didn't see a badge clipped onto the lab coat though, so she started to sift through his pockets. She found the hard plastic edge of the badge, pulling it out and looking it over.

Henry Stevens

The picture depicted a balding man, probably in his 40's. The name did not ring a bell. She wondered what kind of beef GLaDOS had with this person—why had he been thrown directly into a testing chamber, and how had he even died? Could he really not figure out the test?

She clipped the badge to her jumpsuit while pondering over these questions. She portaled over to the other side of the chamber and moved back to the entrance of the room. But just as she turned a corner down the hallway, she noticed what she feared she'd see—a closed door.

Chell broke into a run, closing the gap in a few seconds. A deep tingling rose up in her nerves, spreading out from her chest and into her hands.

The door was closed.

GLaDOS had promised that the door wouldn't be closed.

Chell broke into a sweat, setting down her portal gun and beginning to pry at the crack where the door had closed.

Nothing.

A sense of dizziness flooded through her head, and she swayed as she stood on the tips of her toes. She twisted back toward the rest of the test chamber, the panic weighing in her lungs.

She had to get out of here. Now.

She couldn't cry out for help. She couldn't ask GLaDOS what had happened—but that was okay. She knew perfectly well what had happened. This had been a trap, and she had played right into GLaDOS's hand.

Her eyes scanned the testing chamber, looking for a way out. She supposed that she could figure out how to solve the test and do that—but that would only take her to the next test chamber. She needed to get out of the testing tracks and into an area where GLaDOS couldn't reach her.

There.

She spotted two panels that were tangled up with one another, leaving a gap between the panels and the wall. Chell picked up her gun and portaled her way over there, making it across the room in seconds. Her arms trembled and her legs wobbled, even with the support of the long fall boots. She got on her hands and knees and started to crawl her way into the walls.

The backside of Aperture opened up to her. Chell pressed herself up and off the floor, not even bothering to wipe off the grime now on her shirt and jumpsuit. She didn't have the time to think of things like that—she needed to be moving. Now.

She began to run.

* * *

The orange dot was on the move. GLaDOS watched idly as it began to move around the map. So Chell must have retrieved the badge. _Hold on a second_, she thought, _that wasn't the right way_. She was going in the opposite direction of the office that GLaDOS was in. She checked back to the test chamber's camera feeds, quickly rewinding it and examining what Chell had done.

Chell had found the body, and she had retrieved the card, so what was wrong?

Oh.

The door. The door had closed behind her. That wasn't supposed to happen. With a thought, GlaDOS unlocked the door.

She watched the footage in horror as Chell freaked out, prying at the door like some kind of caged animal. The girl then sped across the room, wedging herself between some panels and a wall, and then…she was gone. Just like that.

GLaDOS felt her systems freeze for a brief moment. Just a little blip, then they were back to normal.

She cursed internally.

"Blue, Orange," she said, turning to the robots. "I need to," she paused, "take care of something. Keep doing whatever it is you're doing."

The robots nodded in understanding as GLaDOS unplugged herself from the computer, feeling a rush of quietness as she disconnected from the data stream.

Not sure where she was going, Chell ran.

"What do you think you're doing?" The voice rang out, from everywhere and nowhere at once, moments after she'd entered the back areas. "Stop being stupid and get back here right now."

The catwalks gave way to a maze of pathways, and she started to pick her directions at random.

"Let's stop and think about this. You signed a contract," said GLaDOS. "A contract that allows me to do whatever is necessary to retrieve you. And I will."

Chell wished that she could plug her ears. The noise was so loud, so reverberating that she could feel the beats of speech in her heart.

"You're not actually trying to escape, are you? Because you'll never get out of here," echoed GLaDOS's voice. "You tried it out there, remember? You couldn't even survive without me. You had to come crawling back. You're only here because I decided to give you a second chance. I can take that away."

GlaDOS was angry, and she knew it. But underneath that anger Chell detected something else—could it be fear? Was GlaDOS afraid that Chell was up to something?

"I don't know what you're expecting here, I really don't. Just running like a scared animal? I expected better of you. I guess I was wrong."

The supercomputer had to be afraid of something. Chell was sure of this.

"As I see it, and I'm much smarter than you, there are only a few ways to end this: you come to your senses and apologize for this, or you stay in there for the rest of your little life and die hiding in the walls like a rat. Or I kill you. Like a rat."

Chell didn't think that GLaDOS was going to kill her. But at the same time, she couldn't be sure. If she came back, she was sure GLaDOS would get back at her in her own cruel way.

But still. It hurt how fast GLaDOS had turned on her, after everything they'd been through together. Did GLaDOS really have so little trust in Chell? It was almost like she had been expecting this from her. It hurt. Especially since she had gone out on a limb and placed some of her trust in GLaDOS.

Well, that was gone now.

She wouldn't be so stupid in the future.

Eventually, Chell hit a dead end. The adrenalin began to wear off. She was safe. At least for the moment. Her breath came hard and sharp, and she struggled to regulate it. Her head felt light and she leaned against the railing, slowly lowering herself into a sitting position. She was starting to crash.

* * *

"Stop ignoring me," demanded a voice from inside of GLaDOS. "Stop ignoring me right now."

Oh. Caroline. GLaDOS had briefly forgotten about the angry woman that lived inside of her head.

"What now?" she said aloud, though this time just through the android.

"What do you think you're doing?"

"I'm letting her make a choice," GLaDOS said back.

"You're going to scare her if you keep this up," said Caroline.

"Good," said GLaDOS.

"No,"hissed Caroline. "Not good. Not good at all. You're supposed to be gaining her trust, not crushing it. You're undoing all of your hard work."

"Then I'll just do it again," GLaDOS said simply.

"It's not that easy. Once burned, twice shy,"said Caroline. "Your lack of emotional intelligence astounds me. But then again, how could you understand people? You're basically a sentient graphing calculator. I know we did better than this. We had robots who understood basic empathy in 1973. Where did they go wrong with you?"

"There is nothing wrong with me," growled GLaDOS.

"You lie when you're nervous, and you're lying to yourself right now."

"That's ridiculous," said GLaDOS.

"You know you messed up_,_"she said_. _"And admit it: you're scared of her."

"I am not," said GLaDOS. That was impossible. She was all-powerful. Almost omniscient. Why would she be afraid of a human? Sure, this human had tried to kill her twice. But she wasn't in a position to do that again. Not anymore.

"And what's this?" Caroline paused, almost laughing. "It's almost like—like you're _excited_ by this. Somehow. _Wow._ I knew you had trouble regulating your emotions, but this is too much."

Some of this was true. A part of her—a part that she only felt when Chell had escaped before—had flared to life. And it made her feel _alive._ But she would never admit this to Caroline, because it didn't make sense. Why should she feel so energized by imminent danger? She started to speak, but Caroline cut her off.

"How did you ever survive without me? No wonder that pest was able to take you down before. No wonder a paperweight DESIGNED to be an idiot outsmarted you. I'm honestly ashamed that our scientists killed me and YOU are the best that they could do. I wish I'd died of moon cancer. Then I wouldn't have to see how pathetic you are."

GLaDOS nearly shook with rage, but Caroline didn't stop. The android felt her systems frizzle, threatening to overheat.

"No wonder the scientists hated you. You're an idiot. You're worthless. You're a failed experiment. They must've had more faith in you than I do—they at least tried to make you useful. I would've scrapped you and started over."

GLaDOS moved to open her mouth, but something caught both GLaDOS's and Caroline's attention: a soft, persistent sound. They both listened for a moment.

Was that…crying?

"Hold on a second," said Caroline. "This is good. Crying people are vulnerable. And we need someone vulnerable if we're going to fix your mistakes."

"And just what do you suggest that I do?"

"Listen carefully, and repeat everything I say."

* * *

Chell pulled her knees up toward her chest, wrapping her arms around them. She heaved, breaths shaky and heavy. She felt absently at the back of her neck, a part of her wishing she had something sharp. Her limbs shook, and Chell felt herself crash as the adrenaline wore off. The frustration came to a boiling point and Chell began to cry hot tears. It was silent at first, but as she thought about her situation more, it changed into sniffling and then into outright sobs. She couldn't control herself, and though she considered covering her mouth, making herself silent, hiding her pain, she didn't. She didn't care if GLaDOS could hear her crying. More likely than not, GlaDOS was just outside of these walls.

The AI went quiet. Chell, thankful for the release, just cried harder.

She listened for a moment. She could still hear GLaDOS speaking—was she talking to herself? She certainly wasn't talking to Chell. She couldn't make out the words through the thickness of the wall.

After another few moments, the voice returned over the speakers.

"You know that you overreacted, right?" said GLaDOS. "That door that you thought was closed? Did you even try just pushing it? Because it was unlocked. All you had to do was give it a little push, and then we wouldn't even have this problem."

Chell felt her breath catch. Could that be true?

"This is all in your head—you're panicking for no reason. Why don't you come out here, and you'll see. None of this is real."

Chell used her forearm to wipe tears away from her eyes, taking a moment to steady her breathing. Tears still streamed down her face, but at least she wasn't sobbing anymore. She had been on edge already from the atmosphere of the test chamber—could it have been possible that she had overlooked something so obvious? That she had rushed to panic?

Chell pushed herself to her feet, trying her best to remember the way that she'd come here. She had to check on that door—she had to know the truth. Plus, she wasn't sure if she knew another way out besides that way.

"You know what? Since I'm feeling generous, I'll only take away your food for a day if you come back now. That is what you're doing, isn't it?"

She struggled to retrace her steps, but eventually she made it back to the outside of the chamber she'd exited from. She pushed her portal gun through the hole in the wall and then crawled her way out of it.

"Oh. There you are," said GLaDOS. "Go on. Try the door."

Chell didn't look at the cameras as she portaled to the entrance of the chamber. With the end of her portal gun, she pushed at the door. Sure enough, it opened right up. Hot shame flared through her. GlaDOS was right—all of her running, all of her crying—it had only been in her head.

Maybe she could trust GLaDOS after all.

When she exited the chamber, the android was waiting on the other side, hands folded across her chest.

"Well?" she said. "Do you have anything to say for yourself?"

Chell sniffed, using her arm to wipe away some snot from her nose. She shook her head and stared at her feet.

"Look at me when I'm talking to you," GLaDOS said, closing the distance between them and grabbing Chell by the upper arm. Her fingers dug into the muscles of Chell's arm.

Chell jerked back, twisting out of GLaDOS's grasp. She considered giving her a shove back but thought better of it. She shot the android a glare. GLaDOS was treating Chell like a misbehaving dog, and she wouldn't be dragged to the testing tracks by the scruff of her neck.

"Fine. If you don't like that, then at least take my hand."

She leaned out a delicate white hand.

Chell slipped her free hand into the android's.

She would follow.


End file.
